


We lay ourselves to rest with both our winnings and our injuries

by thought



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Mollymauk Tealeaf would cast Friends on a cat, Other, Queerplatonic relationship, Unreliable Narrator, situationally nonverbal Mollymauk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29096745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: This is how it goes: You find a family, you lose a family. You find a family, you lose a family. You find a family--
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, pre Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 13
Kudos: 62





	We lay ourselves to rest with both our winnings and our injuries

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to [SK](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns) for the beta.

“I thought the directions were listed on the pamphlet,” Beau says, “You don’t see it?”

Mollymauk doesn’t look up from the folded sheet of paper he’s bent over, Yasha steering him around people and lampposts as they walk.

“Give me two fucking seconds,” he says, irritably. The street performer who had pushed the pamphlet on them had clearly recognized a fellow performer in Mollymauk, mostly ignoring the rest of them, which is the only reason Molly is now in charge of leading them to the playhouse.

“We’re going the right way,” Molly says after another minute. “Everybody watch for a blacksmith with a skull in the window.”

“Well sure,” Beau mutters.

“Can you just tell us where it is in general?” Fjord asks patiently. “So we know roughly where we’re headed.” Yasha thinks Fjord is her favourite member of the group-- he has Caleb's patient kindness without the dangerous self-preservation instincts, and Beau's practicality without the inexplicable anger. She's glad he's Molly's roommate. Well. glad for Molly. Fjord is probably suffering, but he'll learn to love it.

Molly trails a claw slowly across the paper, tongue sticking out just slightly. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s about the journey, not the destination?”

Yasha squeezes his shoulder, rubbing her thumb back and forth over the rough weave of his coat. Caleb is watching them, but if she keeps that physical touch to reassure Molly she's still keeping an eye out, he won't look up and realize. Instead, she stares back at Caleb in the way she knows makes people uncomfortable. It doesn't work.

"The journey would be more enjoyable if it weren't about to rain," Caleb says, slightly too loud.

Yasha leans closer to Molly, trying to get a look at the paper, but Molly brushes her away. “Let me see?” she asks.

“If you’d all give me one fucking minute,” Molly snarls, sparks stinging down her spine and in the back of her head. She shakes her head sharply, and she can feel her face scrunching up in reaction. Jester chokes on the pastry she's nibbling, giggling silently.

Nott groans and snatches the paper out of his hands. Yasha twitches hard and Molly hisses, tail lashing. Caleb tilts his head thoughtfully. Yasha does not understand how Nott and Caleb can watch the other in danger and not jump to protect them as a fundamental imperative. It keeps knocking her off kilter, like water in one ear.

“It’s literally on the next street over from our inn,” Nott announces. “You’re an asshole, Molly.”

"Fuck off," Molly says, darkly. He's smiling with all his teeth.

Caleb steps closer, lengthening his stride so he comes up beside them. Yasha hardens her expression, and slides her hand to Molly's far shoulder, the heat that radiates off his skin warm against the inside of her forearm.

*

It's raining when Yasha wakes up. Not storming, just a steady rattling against the roof and the windows and a heavy damp in the air leaving her to draw the blankets closer around her shoulders. Molly had spent the night in her room, but the other side of the bed is empty, pillows scrunched up against the wall and blankets folded over on top of her. In the grey light trailing listlessly around the edges of the curtains his abandoned coat looks dull and faded, the riot of colour turned thoughtlessly garish and uncomfortable against the browns and greys and chill.

She dresses quickly. She's used to being the first one awake, creeping out quietly with the knowledge that her partner is still content and safe. Waking up alone when she did not fall asleep that way feels like when she has missed an important event or forgotten something and has in turn been forgotten. Yasha leaves people behind. She is not left behind. She knows -- thinks she knows -- that Molly has left his coat here for her as a promise, an anchor, but it doesn't help. If he asks, she will lie and say that it did.

She splashes water on her face from the basin at the end of the hall, smells of cooking meats and wet cloth floating up the narrow stairwell. In the mirror her eyes are sunken and her cheeks are hollow. Her hair is tangled and wild and she bares her teeth at her reflection, snarls at the restless thing inside of her chest.

Downstairs the air is smoky, waterlogged wood sputtering in the hearth. Each slam of the door heralds a biting draft of cold, clean air. Molly is folded into an armchair close to the fire, tail wrapped around his knees, shuffling his cards slowly. There's a mug on the ground beside the leg of his chair.

"Good morning Yasha!" Jester chirps. It's... very loud. She looks over towards the window. Jester and Fjord are eating breakfast, Jester's tail looped affectionately around Fjord's ankle. Fjord looks up when Jester calls out, and he gives Yasha a silent nod.

Yasha crosses the creaking floor, weaving through tables to Molly.

"Sorry I slept late," she says, softly, resting a hip against the side of the armchair.

Molly shrugs, waves a hand.

"I know," Yasha says. "But still. Are we staying here today?" In the circus, weather like this would have meant hunkering down and staying off the road, but this group is harder to predict. She doesn't like it.

Molly nods. There is a restlessness thrumming under her skin in learned response to the rain, and she's already becoming uncomfortably aware of the walls. She'll go out on her own if none of the others plan to leave the inn. Molly's gaze flicks to Jester and Fjord, then to the window.

"I'm not hungry," she says, shrugging. "I'll wait to see if anyone is going out."

Molly reaches down and lifts his empty mug, tipping his head to the side and smiling hopefully at her. Desmond had drawn a mollymawk for her shortly after Molly had found her and brought her to the circus, and she can't help but compare him to the bird in moments like this. One day she's going to tell him he looks like a particularly confused albatross, but she's waiting for the perfect moment.

"Yeah, ok," she says, huffing a false sigh, and takes his mug. She doesn't know what he was drinking, but the dregs smell sharply herbal and sweet, so she asks the barkeep for one for herself as well as Molly's refill.

Beau comes in while she's waiting for the drinks, banging through the door in a flurry of spattering water droplets and stomping boots and with her arrival it is if a soap bubble has popped. Everything seems suddenly far more real, sharp and clear and present in a way that the sleepy-still cold had not.

"Fucking piece of shit," Beau is muttering, shaking her coat and hair furiously. There's mud sprayed up the front of her trousers, and her clothes clearly soaked through. She pulls off her jacket and Yasha watches moisture gather on the corded muscles of her forearms as she wrings it out.

She goes to Fjord and Jester first, so Yasha takes the drinks back to where Molly is sitting and clearly laughing at her. Or Beau. Probably both of them, because Mollymauk is a terrible person.

"Shut up," Yasha says, handing him his drink. "You know I'm not--"

Molly tips his head forward, butting his horns, conciliatory, against her side.

"Hey," Beau says, coming over with a strip of bacon between her teeth, combing her dripping hair back with her fingers.

"Did you have a nice walk?" Yasha asks.

Beau stares. "Do I look like-- no, no, right. Umm. Yes. Very... wet. The rain. Was very wet. So I was also-- which was bad. Not that I don't like being wet in certain contexts--"

"I'm in physical pain over here," Fjord calls across the room. "Please fucking stop talking."

Yasha smiles, and shoves Molly's face away with the palm of her hand to stop his cackling.

"Fuck you, Molly," Beau says. Molly flips her off.

"There's tea," Yasha says, jerking her head toward the bar. "Or... well, I'm not really sure what it is, but it's hot."

Molly waves a hand in a so-so gesture. Beau grabs Yasha's arm.

"Great, come on, I'll buy you a refill."

"I just got one," Yasha says, but lets Beau pull her away. Once they're at the counter Beau leans in close. She smells like damp wool and sweat, but Yasha likes the heat of their sides pressed together. "Is Molly... ok?"

"What?" it's so far from the question that Yasha is expecting that she has to take a minute to adjust her conversational script.

"He hasn't said anything all morning. It's starting to freak us out."

"Hasn't he?"

"I mean, not unless he talked to you."

Yasha has to think about it. "I guess not," she says, after a minute. "But that just happens sometimes."

"...Uhhh."

Yasha shrugs. "Words are hard," she says. "Sometimes Molly loses his for a little while."

Beau presses her lips together, and frowns. She thinks maybe it's hard for Beau to understand. Beau thrives on words. Information. Flirtation. Threat. Research. Yasha thinks probably Beau's words are carved in to her bones deep instead of carefully hoarded and selected like stones from a riverbed like Yasha's, or handfuls of gem dust like Molly's, sparkling and plentiful and everywhere until it slips through his fingers.

Yasha looks back over at Molly. He's already watching them, and he wiggles his fingers at her in a cheerful wave when he catches her gaze. Yasha sticks out her tongue at him, just a bit.

Later that day, when Yasha comes back from her own rain-soaked walk, Molly and Jester are leaned together over a table playing some kind of board game. They're chattering to each other, sharp hisses and snarls underlying each click of the game pieces on the wooden board. Yasha pauses in the doorway, watching them. Maybe, she thinks, she's been thinking about it wrong. Molly's words are as deeply settled in him as Beau's are-- he's just never had somebody who could listen before.

*

In the hours after Jester's Zone of Truth and the subsequent admonitions, Molly is sitting on the roof of the inn, legs swinging, smoking something sweet and fruity. The moons are bright, washing his upturned face an eerie monochrome. Yasha reaches out the window and taps on the side of his foot, knocking a tiny shower of dust off his boot.

"Hi," Molly calls down, pulling his feet out of her reach.

She leans her head out, tipping back to stare up at him upside down. "Are you coming in?"

"No."

She sighs. She's done stupider things because of Mollymauk, but it will still be embarrassing if she breaks her ribs falling out the window.

She leaves her sword in the room she's sharing with the others, and then starts wriggling her way out. The autumn air is chilled, the day's crisp bite made stinging by the night.

Molly moves out of the way silently as she scrabbles awkwardly up, but he doesn't offer a hand in aid. Once she's situated, legs crossed, she reaches out a hand to touch his shoulder.

"Are you ok?"

"Sure," Molly says, not looking at her.

"I just asked that to start the conversation," Yasha explains. "It wasn't really a question."

Molly's tail flicks hard, thumping against the thatch. "I'm having a fucking panic attack. Is that allowed?"

"We can leave, if you want," she offers. She's heard Nott say it to Caleb, and she thinks maybe it will help Molly the same way.

He laughs, a harsh, ugly sound. "Bullshit we can. Where the fuck would I go?"

Yasha hunches her shoulders, flicks the side of her thumb against a loose piece of straw. "They didn't react badly."

"Give them time," he says. "Maybe I'll go hang out with Cree, aye? Really fucking embrace my past." He spits the last words with such venom she's surprised they don't come out in Infernal.

"Mollymauk," she says, sharply. He flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette and smiles over his shoulder at her with all of his teeth.

"Caleb was kind," she says, quietly. "He didn't have to be. That could have put everyone in danger. It still could."

"Caleb doesn't understand how groups work," he mutters. "Of course he was kind."

Yasha takes a minute to think. "Who are you angry at?"

Molly shrugs, tail still hitting the roof rhythmically.

She continues. "You couldn't control this. This isn't your fault." She's not sure if she believes her own words, but its what Molly needs to hear, and that's more important. "

"I know that," he snaps. Yasha doesn't like this side of anyone, where they say the opposite of what they mean. She didn't like it when Zuala did it, doesn't like it when Molly does it. She feels helpless and stupid and it frustrates her, and her own anger has no place here.

"I don't think they think any less of you," she says. "And they're... we'll deal with Lucien's past if it becomes an issue."

"Sure," he says, flippantly.

Yasha breathes in, breathes out. Kylre had taught her that, so now it's kind of a self-defeating exercise.

"Being alone isn't the worst thing," she says. "I know you've never... had to be. But you're smart and strong and charming, you'd be fine. I don't mean that you should leave, but if you want to and you're scared, don't be."

"Does your god speak to you?" he says, and there is a blade hidden in the casual velvet of his inquiry.

"In his ways," she says, evenly. "But I'd always find you, if I can." Yasha is good at running away. Yasha is good at not being there for the people she loves. But she wants Molly to calm down, and she doesn't mean it any less just because she doesn't think she's capable of fulfilling the implied promise.

"They thought I was normal," Molly says, bitterly. "They thought I could take care of myself. They thought I was wise. And now it's going to be like everyone else."

"Wise is a... bold statement," she says, dryly, and is pleased when the corner of his mouth curves up. "And I don't think they'll think any less of you."

"You saw how some of the people in the carnival were," he says, "and they were family. These people are just... companions of convenience."

Yasha knows what he means. She'd spent a long time being confused by the way some members of the carnival spoke to Molly like he couldn't understand them, or didn't speak to him at all. Knows some people were uncomfortable with him, some people wouldn't let him handle cooking or knives or talking to strangers, even though his literal job was to talk to strangers and he juggled swords like he breathed. Even Gustav had seemed more at ease when she'd started going with Molly into towns to do promotion. She doesn't know this group well enough to know if they'll be just as bad, but she thinks at least Beau will be ok. And Caleb, maybe, if he's paid as much attention to Mollymauk as he seems to.

"Suppose I could always find another carnival," he says, nodding to himself. "if I needed to."

"I think you could do a lot of things," she says. "You're very easy to like."

He slowly straightens up, then leans towards her, resting his shoulder against hers. His eyelids blink very slowly, and his ears flick. She pets his hair, combing her fingers through the tangles. She doesn't understand Molly's desperate fear of isolation, but she can still sympathize. That first night in Trostenwald after she'd been released he had clung to her like spider web, shivering. Yasha is used to losing her family. Molly isn't. She's glad he has his goddess, and she hopes he's making friends with the others in their little group. She hopes he's making family.

*

"What are you doing?" Molly whispers, crouching down in the long grass beside her. Yasha hushes him.

"Making a friend."

"Hmm."

A few feet ahead of her, Frumpkin arches his back and bats at a dead leaf. Yasha extends her hand a little bit further.

"You know that could be Caleb in there," Molly says. "I'm pretty sure he just hangs out in the cat's senses for fun sometimes."

"That sounds nice," Yasha says. 

"It's creepy," Molly mutters. Yasha shrugs. Either way, she gets a friend if she's successful.

Molly settles in beside her, making coaxing tsking noises between his teeth.

"Shhh," she says, again.

Molly manages to stay silent for about a minute before he starts cooing at Frumpkin to come closer. Yasha sighs.

"You have to be quiet," she says. "And still."

"He's going to lose interest," Molly objects.

"He's going to be scared off," she retorts.

"I could just charm him," Molly offers.

"That doesn't count as making friends. Besides, if he's magic, it probably wouldn't work."

"It can't hurt to try."

"it really can."

Frumpkin's ear flicks forward, and his tail lashes hard.

"Don't use magic," she says, softly. "Don't talk. He'll come to you if you're patient."

*

“You did this,” Molly says, darkly, flopping down beside Yasha. She swallows the bite of jerky she’s been chewing for the past few minutes and leans back against the wall, settling in.

"It’s pretty early, Mollymauk, I haven’t really had time to do much.”

“Oh you’ve had enough,” he says. His tail curls around her waist automatically, and she drops one hand absently to rest over the tip.

“Maybe. Tell me more and I'll decide if I'm willing to take the blame.?”

Molly groans, pulling his coat closer around him. It's cold, underground, even with the heat of the swamp above them. “You had to fucking shave him, didn’t you?”

“Oh,” she says, and laughs. “He’s pretty, right?”

“Fuck you, dear,” Molly says, lightly. “He’s stunning and I hate it."

Yasha rubs the fingers of her free hand absently over the smooth, slightly damp stone behind her. There's nobody else close enough to hear their conversation. “He said he uses the dirt to hide.”

Molly nods absently. It’s not the first time Yasha gets the impression she’s just realized something that was obvious to everyone else. "I knew it worked, but I hadn't realized just how well until now. So... thanks for that, I suppose."

Yasha has lived in the woods, spent long days on the road with the circus. She knows how it feels to be covered in dirt, and it has never let her feel hidden.

“I can’t believe I’m going to fuck the disaster human wizard,” Molly groans. Yasha reaches over and scritches at the base of his horns, and he butts his head against her shoulder affectionately.

“You really are, aren’t you?”

“Assuming he’s amenable.”

Yasha laughs a bit. “Yeah. I wouldn’t worry too much about that. You might need to make it clear to him, but I don’t think he’ll say no.”

Molly hums. “Got it.”

“We’re… a lot alike,” Yasha says, picking her words with thoughtful deliberation.

Molly nods, horns almost tangling in her braids. “I suspected as much.”

“If he asks for anywhere else to be shaved, I’ll let you know,” she says, helpfully.

Molly groans, covering his face with his hands. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fine. I’m fine. This is fine.”

Caleb glances up from his cat and lifts an eyebrow at Yasha across the cave. She grins a bit, curls Molly’s hair around her fingers and brushes it behind his ear. Caleb’s eyes track down to Mollymauk, and a delicate flush splashes across his now-visible cheeks.

“You should talk to him, if you want,” Yasha says. Molly will do whatever he chooses, that has always been the case, but sometimes he needs a bit of a push. Validation. He is still uncertain of so many things.

“I will,” he says. “Just perhaps not… now. Or in the near future. I have to be careful with him.”

Yasha pulls her hand away from Molly’s head, inadvertently yanking the hair that is still tangled around her fingers. He leans into the pull, and she can feel the tiny shiver that shudders through his form where he’s pressed against her. Caleb’s eyes have gone wide, and he’s biting his lip the same way he does when he’s found a new spell to copy down. Yasha thinks about the way flames curl from Caleb’s hands, the devastation he can bring with a thought. She thinks about the sincerity, the kindness when he had told Mollymauk that his confessions were enough. Yasha was born Orphan Maker. There are many facets of herself that she sees in Caleb Widogast.

“I don’t think you’re the one who needs to be careful,” she says, slowly.

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically canon compliant, but I want you to know I imagine it takes place in a universe where Molly lives because I like being happy.  
> Also Yasha and Caleb are autism bros fight me


End file.
